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This article presents theoretical and empirical analysis of the micro-politics of resistance. We theorize resistance at the level of meanings and subjectivities, drawing attention to the multidirectional and generative effects in identity construction. We address two shortcomings present in much of the theorizing of resistance, namely, the conceptualizing of resistance as a set of actions and behaviours, and the narrow conception of resistance as a reaction to repressive power. Focusing on the UK public services, we draw from texts generated within interviews with public service professionals in the police, social services and secondary education to explore the meanings individuals ascribe to the discourse of New Public Management (NPM) and their positioning within these meanings. The analysis contributes to the study of organizations in three respects. First, it offers a more detailed and varied understanding of resistance that can account for different motivations and ways in which individuals struggle to transform meanings. Second, drawing on specific cases, it illustrates the process of the micro-politics of resistance. Third, it presents an empirically grounded understanding of the character and conduct of NPM that can accommodate greater complexity and nuance.

Theoretical developments in the analysis of organizations have recently turned to an "organizational becoming" perspective, which sees the social world as enacted in the micro-context of communicative interactions among individuals through which meaning is negotiated. According to this view, organizational change is endemic, natural and ongoing; it occurs in every-day interactions as actors engage in the process of establishing new meanings for organizational activities. We adopt this approach to study how meanings were negotiated by senior and middle managers in a workshop held as part of a culture change program at a telecommunications company. Our study identifies two very different patterns in these negotiations, constituted by the particular communicative practices adopted by participants. We discuss the implications of these patterns for organizational change in relation to generative dialogue and power-resistance relations between senior and middle managers.

The last 15 years have witnessed renewed interest in resistance in and around organizations. In this essay, we offer a conceptual framework to thematise this burgeoning conceptual and empirical terrain. We critically explore scholarship that examines resistance in terms of its manifestations and political intent or impact. We offer four fields of possibility for resistance scholarship: individual infrapolitics, collective infrapolitics, insubordination, and insurrection (the "Four I's" of Resistance).We conclude by considering the relationship between resistance theory and praxis, and pose four questions, or provocations, for stimulating future resistance research and practice.

This article is located within the context of British Higher Education. It examines the ‘radical reforms’ of New Public Management (NPM) (marketization and managerialism) in the management of university organizations. The article has two main aims. First, to explore the extent to which NPM initiatives have influenced individual women academics’s day–to–day experiences of the gendered academy and their professional identities. Second, to understand individuals’ active responses to NPM to develop theorizing of individual resistance in public service organizations. Adopting a Foucauldian feminist framework, it is suggested that the introduction of NPM presents a site for political struggle for women academics. The article explores the gendered nature of NPM, to determine how, in three individual universities, different women academics have responded to the ‘managerialist challenge’. Finally, the article focuses on the ways in which different women academics might accommodate, resist, or transform the discourses of NPM, the factors facilitating this, and the material outcomes.